Unwed mothers paid price
‘Mum’s the Word’ documentary features activism of P.E.I. adoptees, birth parents
Filmmaker and educator Colin Scheyer believes there is a pitfall when it comes to telling stories about adoption.
Stories that appear in magazines or in newspapers often focus solely on personal stories, either the struggle of the adopted child or the triumph of adoptees and birth parents reuniting later in life. While these stories are very personal for many, Scheyer believes that focusing solely on individual stories paints an incomplete picture of what the experiences of adoptees and birth parents tells us about Canada.
“We don’t like to think of it as a system. We like to think of these lovely happily-everafter stories,” Scheyer told
The Guardian in a phone interview Tuesday.
Scheyer believes the history of adoption involved a systemic stigmatization of unwed mothers. He believes this story also often involved persistent human rights violations of adopted children and birth parents.
Scheyer hopes a documentary, which has taken him three years to complete, will start to change how Canadians talk about adoption.
The documentary focuses on a number of stories of adoptees and birth parents across Canada but includes a significant focus on grassroots activism from adoptees in P.E.I. in recent years.
The documentary will be released online on March 10 at mumsthewordthefilm.com.
Scheyer believes adoption in Canada should be looked at through a historical lens.
“I think we have to look at our society as it was in the post-World War period.
This was the beginnings of cutbacks. This was the beginnings of fiscal restraint,” Scheyer said in an interview from Toronto.
“And we often needed populations to demonize.”
In Scheyer’s analysis, unwed mothers were victimized by several institutions, including social service agencies and church organizations. He believes this may have been partly because they did not fit with the ideal of the middle class.
“We had a huge boom in the middle class. The middle class was seeing a lot of benefits. And those that played by the rules were rewarded for playing by the rules,” Scheyer said.
“If you couldn’t have a child, all you needed to justify was that you were a married couple.”
Scheyer’s documentary chronicles, in part, the advocacy of birth parents and adoptees on P.E.I. pushing for the opening of adoption records. It features the stories of many well-known writers and advocates, including Theresa Aylward and journalist and author Stella Shepard.
Last fall, the province passed legislation that will see records open starting in January 2021. However, many were unhappy that a provision allowing a veto on opening records for either birth parents or adoptees remained a part of the new legislation.
Scheyer believes Islanders are more aware about the issues involved with adoption records than other provinces.
“I imagine a lot of people in P.E.I. will be very interested in this documentary. For a small province, we’ve given a very significant chunk of our attention to P.E.I.,” he said.
Scheyer believes the web-based documentary is designed to be free and accessible to all.
“Its (an) ideal platform is on people’s home computers where they have their utmost attention. They can focus and really listen to these stories,” he said.